Oddball

Photography is a minefield of oddball and obsession, and I'm no exception. 

These will mean nothing to you, I know - they would mean nothing to most people unless they happen to have a family member who is obsessed with taking photos - but my family will tell you the story.

Similar story is told in the book Running Home, authored by Katie Arnold whose father wore his camera everywhere he went, like an extra appendage. Slung around his neck, the Nikon was part of his dress code, just like mine.

A wave of embarrassment washed over me, when I read how Katie made fun of her dad for taking too many pictures. According to Katie, he never took just one - never. "One more shot," he'd murmur as the shutter went click, click and the daughters held their positions, eyeballs rolling back in their heads with exasperation, faint smirks twitching at the mouth corners. "Okay, just one more, one more."

The scenario and conversations aren't verbatim, but they're pretty darn close to what I did (and do).

Parents

I have been busy with infotainment video shooting this weekend. Many colleagues of mine helped. As parents, we found the best subjects of our conversation being our children.

We don't know when we first discovered that childhood goes in the blink of an eye. So much so that we all start to miss the opportunity, one way or another, when our kids grow out of something now and then.

I know exactly how it feels when Fredrik Backman writes about a father driving to his daughter's new college dorm room in the novel The Winners. The father went to help her drill holes in the wall for bookshelves. He was the one who was there, and he was so pleased with himself when his daugher whispered: "Thanks Dad, what would I do without you?" The holes ended up a bit wonky, though.

The next time the father visited, the shelves were straight. The daughter had bought a drill and fixed them herself. She never told her father because she didn't want to hurt his feelings, and he coughed to clear the lump in his throat and pretended he hadn't noticed.

Well, maybe I will be like that father with a lump in the throat one day.

Downtime

I'd spent almost one whole day at a public housing estate shopping mall as volunteer to talk to the public. By the time I returned home at evening, I felt guilty for leaving my daughter alone. 

In no way did I think we should talk about her homework. We all need unstressed periods of downtime every day. "I love you too much to fight with you about your homework." This is the title of a chapter in the book The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives.

I have learned about the importance of downtime. Think of downtime as anything relaxing or rejuvenating, nothing purposeful, all of which are powerful for maintaining a healthy brain. We sat and shared caramel pudding, followed by a board game Battleshhp. 

As simple as that. 

Transformation

Clad in his sports T-shirt, emblazoned with gym logo, Anders is a white character in Mohsin Hamid's short novel, The Last White Man.

One day, he was horrified to find his skin turned dark on waking up. As much as Anders wished it's a nightmare and waited for an undoing, the answer from his mirror image and selfie picture unfailingly suggested there is no turning back. White became black.

Lest you think it's a Kafkaesque fictional scene, I have to tell you my recent experience in real life. I grappled with transformation on waking up, the way Anders did. I found my near vision lost on walking up this Sunday. The book starts to move further and further away, more or less like how the hairline moves away with age.

I came to the inescapable conclusion that it's time for me to buy bifocal glasses. Which continued to bother me. Nobody wishes to find a decline in near vision, least of all by a voracious reader. I was chagrined at calling myself a presbyope. Kübler-Ross was hovering over the room as I looked up state-of-mind analysis publication on how people felt about presbyopia. The best part of verbtaim analysis is that we can listen to the way each individual frames his or her life event. The sad part is that I have to agree with one of the social media posts "I feel that my arms are now too short."

Repose

Much as thought-leaders had described, travelling opens our mind. We slow down when we travel. We open up when we slow down.

That’s what I did after I’d taken a week off. Of course, a family vacation during Chinese New Year means opportunity to relax with far fewer unread work-related emails.

The first thing I notice is the number of blog posts written. Next, I watch myself shaking things off like Taylor Swift’s hit song “Shake it Off.”

I leaned back, gazed out the window, and watched the snowflakes. That’s the time when everything - except my hair - has turned white.

Swing

With lesser and lesser pandemic restrictions, borders have reopened in many places around the world. Our family have longed to travel since three years ago. 

The silver lining of all the hiatus in luggage packing is that I have found my daughter grow up a great deal when we are on the road again. So, when we were taking Shinkansen bullet train from Narita Airport to our town, she did most of the luggage carrying and moving. I saw her preparing own luggage, bringing her diary and picking the snow gears. 

Without realising it at the time, I’d come to travel with an independent daughter, in large measure. It would take some time for a daddy to accept this. Before we headed back home this morning, I took my daughter to a playground near where we had been staying. Without anyone telling us to do so, we made a beeline to the swing. She quickly wiped clear the snow and enjoyed her swing. There’s something magical about swing in playground - jumping on the seat and riding high, for anyone with any age and of any race. As she stood up and asked me to push her, I felt like being on cloud nine. I’ve discovered that I still treasure the way a daddy can be serving the way one does for a toddler.

Snowboard

Who doesn't hesitate to try something new?

No one is born a skier. We are all, at one time or another, going to stumble before getting used to the ski. Now that my daughter is pretty comfortable on ski slopes, her next activity would be snowboarding. It isn't easy. Landing on the butts again and again can be achingly frustrating. That requires patience. And perhaps a mindset to stay low.

In our quest to encourage her to learn snowboarding, we have bolstered learning by watching YouTube video last night. Learning snowboarding by YouTube might not be as easy as learning a language by Duolingo, or learning algebra from Khan Academy for that matter. But that's the most popular experience of learning nowadays. As an intro tutorial before the on-the-ground practice, at least, for my daughter.

We rented the snowboard gear and let her try. She fell. She tried. Along the way, she had toppled over - a lot. One after another, step by step, she found her way on chair lift, and maneuvered her way down the slope. And another. And another. Many times.